Harry Tuttle
Member
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2003
- Messages
- 3,093
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r108:1:./temp/~r108H43eDA:e81787:
Mrs. FEINSTEIN.
Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the bill that is before this body, and I wish to begin by saying that I have great respect and have enjoyed working with the Senator from Idaho on a number of issues, including Healthy Forests. But I also must say we profoundly disagree when it comes to guns. So it is probably no surprise to him that I rise to strenuously object to what I see happening here.
___I think we have to recognize that guns in America are responsible for the deaths of 30,000 Americans a year. The question comes whether we should be giving the gun industry sweeping and unprecedented protection from the type of lawsuits that are available to every other victim involving every other industry in America.
__The simple fact is that over the years, the gun industry has managed to lessen, avoid, or prevent any prudent regulation. For example, they are exempt from Consumer Product Safety Commission laws, thanks to the National Rifle Association's efforts over the years to keep it that way.
___Secondly, the Federal Government cannot do much to police bad gun dealers--and we know there are some--or to enforce gun laws because the hands of the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, are tied by limits to their authorities which have been put in place by the National Rifle Association. They can only do a once-a-year audit, for example. They only have limited options.
___The number of ATF agents is kept so low they cannot possibly inspect all of the gun dealerships in this country. So today only the court system offers victims of negligent manufacturers, of which there are some, and dealers, of which there are some, the ability to receive compensation for their injuries. Only the court system provides a means for changing these negligent practices through the threat of legal liability.
___I hope to show that the threat of legal liability has, in fact, resulted in more responsible manufacturing and selling principles by this industry. If we remove this one remaining avenue toward enforcing responsibility, victims will have no recourse. Gun owners and gun victims alike will be left virtually powerless against an industry that is already immune from so many other consumer protections. So we find ourselves today on the cusp of yet another NRA victory.
___Let me be clear, this is not a victory for NRA members, most of whom are law-abiding gun owners who might some day benefit from the ability to sue a manufacturer that sold them a defective or dangerous gun. No, this will be a victory for those who have turned their organization into a political powerhouse, unconcerned with the rights of the majority of Americans who want prudent controls over firearms.
___I do not support meritless lawsuits against the gun industry. I do not think anybody does. It is my belief gun manufacturers and dealers, though, should be held accountable for irresponsible marketing and distribution practices, just as anyone else would be,
particularly when these practices may cause guns to fall into the hands of criminals, juveniles, or mentally ill people.
___This legislation has one simple purpose: to prevent lawsuits from those harmed by gun violence. These include: suits filed by cities and counties which face rising law enforcement and medical costs due to increased gun crimes, crimes often committed using guns that flood the illegal market with the full knowledge of the distributors that the legal market could not possibly be absorbing so many of these weapons; suits filed by organizations on behalf of their members; and victims of violent crimes and their families who are injured or killed as a result of gun violence or defective guns that malfunction due to negligent design or manufacture.
___This issue is not an abstract one. When people vote for this gun liability absolution today, they are going to be hurting a lot of people all across this land, and I want to point out a few because this bill affects the lives of real gun victims, victims not simply of criminal misuse by a well-designed firearm, but victims of guns that have been designed poorly or marketed in ways which quite frankly should be illegal.
___One of the cases that could be affected by this_legislation, though this would ultimately be decided by a judge, is that of Brandon Maxfield, a 7-year-old from my State, Oakland, CA.
___On April 6, 1994, Brandon was shot in the chin by his babysitter. The shooting left him a quadriplegic and he will never be able to walk again.
___The babysitter, a friend of the family, was simply trying to remove a bullet from the chamber of a weapon that was found in the house, a .38 caliber Saturday night special, when the gun accidentally fired.
___Here is the key: The weapon was clearly designed in an inherently dangerous way. It can only be unloaded when the safety is in the off position and can therefore fire.
___Now common sense might say when you want to unload a gun you would first put the safety on. It defies common sense, on the other hand, to design a firearm so it can only be unloaded in the firing position. After all, one might expect the gun to accidentally fire as someone like Brandon's babysitter struggles to unload it.
___Finally last year, after 9 years of litigation, a jury found the manufacturer and distributor of Saturday night specials partially liable for Brandon's injuries. This was a tremendous victory for Brandon and his family and a victory for all people who want to see guns made safer. This bill, however, would take away Brandon's right to sue, and I will explain why a bit later.
___The bottom line, though, is Brandon's case was not frivolous. The jury did not think it was. Without the threat of lawsuits, companies like the one that made the gun in this case will have little incentive to change the design, but this legislation would remove the threat of that suit, depriving Brandon of compensation but, even worse, depriving the public of this key avenue to improving the habits of gun manufacturers.
___I will quickly go through what the bill does. I know others have and will continue to speak to this, but I think it bears repeating because I do not think everybody supporting this bill really understands its full ramifications.
___Essentially, this bill prohibits any civil liability lawsuit from being filed against the gun industry for damages resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a gun, with a number of narrow exceptions.
___In doing so, the bill effectively rewrites traditional principles of liability law, which generally hold that persons and companies may be liable for their negligence even if others are liable as well. This bill would essentially give the gun industry blanket immunity from civil liability cases, an immunity no other industry in America has today.
___The bill does allow certain cases to move forward, as its supporters have pointed out, but these cases can proceed only on very narrow circumstances. Countless experts have now said this bill would stop virtually all of the suits against gun dealers and manufacturers filed to date, many of which are vital to changing industry practice and compensating victims who have been horribly injured through the clear negligence or even borderline criminal conduct of some gun dealers and manufacturers.
___The exemptions in the bill, even the new bill, set a very high burden of proof of negligence for plaintiffs, allow for a very slight number of cases against gun manufacturers to be filed, and only protect a limited class of cases against sellers.
___Under this bill, cases could only be filed in the following narrow circumstances. First, if a gun dealer transfers a firearm knowing the gun will be used to commit a violent or drug trafficking crime. In other words, a suit could go forward if a dealer gives a gun to someone who comes in and says, ``Give me a gun, I need to go kill someone.'' This provision only applies in the highly unlikely event a gun buyer clearly indicates his or her criminal intentions to the gun seller. Fat chance of that happening.
___I am not a gun dealer, but I imagine most criminals do not make a habit of announcing their criminal intentions to gun dealers. So this exception to the immunity created by the bill is really no exception at all. It will apply to almost no cases.
___Secondly, there is an exemption in the bill which applies if a dealer sells a gun to someone knowing the buyer will or is likely to misuse the firearm and that the individual buyer does indeed misuse it to commit a criminal offense.
___This provision is slightly more likely than the first exemption, but it still requires a very high burden of proof. Instead of common negligence, which might only require that the dealer did not take enough care in making sure that criminals did not obtain guns to commit crimes, what this provision requires is that the dealer actually know that the buyer is likely to use the gun to do harm.
___How can this be proven? Mr. President, you are an attorney. How can this be proven? The difficulty in proving such a claim might all but bar this exemption from ever coming into play. It would have no effect on such practices as straw purchases and large volume sales--which, incidentally, are the two most common sources of crime guns--because in a straw purchase, the dealer could always claim that he or she had no idea what the buyer would be doing with the guns.
___Third, the bill would allow suits to proceed where a defendant has violated a law or regulation in the sale of the specific gun that caused the damage or injury. This sets a very high burden of proof for negligence. Again, this would not affect dealers who conduct straw purchases or other dangerous distributing conduct because such conduct does not specifically violate any laws or regulations, although I must say it should.
___Because there are so few real laws or regulations governing how guns are sold or manufactured, this provision, too, is relatively insignificant in terms of how it affects the underlying thrust of the bill.
___Now I should point out that this provision is different than the provision in the original bill as passed by the House. Under the original bill, only knowing and willful violations of the law could be subject to suit, which is an even higher burden to reach. But even under this revised legislation, this standard is far higher than current law.
___The simple truth is, negligence does not involve a violation of the law. Requiring a plaintiff to prove that a gun store, for example, was not only negligent in letting a criminal obtain a dozen guns, but the gun store actually violated a law in doing so, of which there are few, makes it very difficult to succeed.
___So with any other business or product, in every other industry, a seller or manufacturer can be liable if it is negligent--but not here. Since money, rather than life or liberty is at stake in a civil case, the standard of proof is lower. There need not be a criminal violation to recover damages, and in the overwhelming majority of civil cases there is no criminal violation. So if, for instance, a crib manufacturer designs and markets a crib that results in the death of children who use the crib, we allow that manufacturer to be sued as one means of deterring such conduct and of compensating the families of the children who died from the defectively designed crib. The manufacturer need
not have committed any crime. It is the negligence in making a defective and dangerous crib that is enough. Here, contrary to general negligence law covering almost every other product, this bill allows negligent gun dealers and manufacturers to get off the hook unless they violated a criminal law. That is just dreadful. You are creating a special area of law for gun manufacturers and saying unless they violate a law they can manufacture a defective weapon.
___The judge in Washington State presiding over the case brought against the DC area snipers has twice ruled that the dealer, Bull's Eye Shooters Supply, and the manufacturer, Bushmaster Firearms, may be liable in negligence for enabling the snipers to obtain their gun. But even with the new modifications, the sniper victims' case could very well be thrown out of court under this bill. So know what you are doing, Members who vote for it. The sniper victims' case could well be thrown out of court by this bill because there is no evidence that either the negligent dealer or manufacturer violated a criminal law.
___Indeed, both Lloyd Cutler and David Boies, each prominent attorneys, recently stated unequivocally that the sniper case would have to be dismissed under this bill, and countless professors have written a letter agreeing with this interpretation of the law.
___This is the most notorious sniper case in America. You have negligence on the part of the gun dealer who sold that gun, didn't report it until way late, allowed the snipers to get that gun, and now we are passing a law to prevent the victims from suing under civil liability. Nowhere else in the law does this exist.
___In another case, a Massachusetts court has ruled that gun manufacturer Kahr Arms may be liable for negligently hiring drug-addicted criminals and enabling them to stroll out the plant door with unmarked guns to be sold to criminals. But with the proposed changes, the case against Kahr Arms would be dismissed. Its conduct, though outrageous, violated no law. Negligent? Yes. Criminal? No.
___Members, know what you are doing when you vote for this bill.
___The fourth exemption in the bill is when a dealer somehow violates a sales contract. An example of this would be the dealer failing to provide the gun for which the purchaser paid. This, too, is clearly a limited exception. Victims of defectively designed or negligently sold guns would not be allowed to file cases under this provision. Furthermore, the claims of gun purchasers would be limited to what they were entitled to under the scope of the contract or warranty.
___The fifth exemption in the original bill allowed suits to go forward if the gun manufacturer has caused ``physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of a product when used as intended.'' This provision altered generally accepted principles of products liability law which essentially state that a manufacturer must implement feasible safety features that would prevent injury caused by foreseeable use or misuse, even if that use is not ``intended.'' For instance, it might not be intended for a child to try to eat a small toy, but it is clearly foreseeable.
___This new modified gun immunity legislation does add language allowing suits to go forward as long as the activity was ``reasonably foreseeable'' by the manufacturer or dealer, which appears to match current law. However, the devil is in the details because the bill then takes away any benefit that language might have by stating that the exemption will not apply to lawsuits that also involve criminal acts by the defendant.
___The best example of how this provision would affect the case is the Brandon Maxfield babysitter shooting I mentioned earlier, where a child was accidentally shot by a babysitter because the chamber of the gun could not be checked without clicking the safety to ``off.'' In that case, the gun fired while the babysitter tried to check the chamber.
___The problem is the bill prohibits suits involving even foreseeable accidents, if there are criminal charges. In the babysitter case, the babysitter could easily be, and indeed was, charged with manslaughter--which is a crime. Thus, even this suit would still be barred by this revised bill.
___Contrary to current law which allows judges and juries to apportion blame and damages, this bill would bar any damages against a manufacturer if another party was liable due to a criminal act.
___Why should firearms get special treatment? In our society, we hold manufacturers liable for the damage their products cause. This is the case with automobiles. This is the case with cribs. It is the case with children's toys, and it should be the case with guns as well. Lawsuits filed against the gun industry provide a way for those harmed to seek justice from the damages and destruction caused by firearms. Just as important, they create incentives to reform the practices proven to be dangerous.
___After all, this is the most dangerous consumer item found in a home.
___According to statistics, there is a gun in 43 percent of the households with children in America. There is a loaded gun in 1 of 10 households with children, and a gun that is left unlocked or improperly stored in 1 of every 8 family homes.
___More children and adult family members are killed each year by having a loaded gun at home than from incidents with criminal intruders. In fact, a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to lead to an accidental injury or death to family members than used against a criminal intruder. These are senseless actions that can be prevented by simply designing guns with technologically and economically feasible safety devices.
___Recent cases have produced evidence from law enforcement investigations, as well as industry insiders, that the gun industry may be ignoring numerous patented safety devices for guns and intentionally flooding certain markets with guns knowingly, and also profiting from the fact that the excess weapons would make their way into the hands of criminals. We have seen gun dealers selling guns when they know these guns are being purchased to immediately resell to criminals--often to criminals who wait right outside the door or even inside the very store while the guns are being bought by someone who can pass a background check.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN.
Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the bill that is before this body, and I wish to begin by saying that I have great respect and have enjoyed working with the Senator from Idaho on a number of issues, including Healthy Forests. But I also must say we profoundly disagree when it comes to guns. So it is probably no surprise to him that I rise to strenuously object to what I see happening here.
___I think we have to recognize that guns in America are responsible for the deaths of 30,000 Americans a year. The question comes whether we should be giving the gun industry sweeping and unprecedented protection from the type of lawsuits that are available to every other victim involving every other industry in America.
__The simple fact is that over the years, the gun industry has managed to lessen, avoid, or prevent any prudent regulation. For example, they are exempt from Consumer Product Safety Commission laws, thanks to the National Rifle Association's efforts over the years to keep it that way.
___Secondly, the Federal Government cannot do much to police bad gun dealers--and we know there are some--or to enforce gun laws because the hands of the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, are tied by limits to their authorities which have been put in place by the National Rifle Association. They can only do a once-a-year audit, for example. They only have limited options.
___The number of ATF agents is kept so low they cannot possibly inspect all of the gun dealerships in this country. So today only the court system offers victims of negligent manufacturers, of which there are some, and dealers, of which there are some, the ability to receive compensation for their injuries. Only the court system provides a means for changing these negligent practices through the threat of legal liability.
___I hope to show that the threat of legal liability has, in fact, resulted in more responsible manufacturing and selling principles by this industry. If we remove this one remaining avenue toward enforcing responsibility, victims will have no recourse. Gun owners and gun victims alike will be left virtually powerless against an industry that is already immune from so many other consumer protections. So we find ourselves today on the cusp of yet another NRA victory.
___Let me be clear, this is not a victory for NRA members, most of whom are law-abiding gun owners who might some day benefit from the ability to sue a manufacturer that sold them a defective or dangerous gun. No, this will be a victory for those who have turned their organization into a political powerhouse, unconcerned with the rights of the majority of Americans who want prudent controls over firearms.
___I do not support meritless lawsuits against the gun industry. I do not think anybody does. It is my belief gun manufacturers and dealers, though, should be held accountable for irresponsible marketing and distribution practices, just as anyone else would be,
particularly when these practices may cause guns to fall into the hands of criminals, juveniles, or mentally ill people.
___This legislation has one simple purpose: to prevent lawsuits from those harmed by gun violence. These include: suits filed by cities and counties which face rising law enforcement and medical costs due to increased gun crimes, crimes often committed using guns that flood the illegal market with the full knowledge of the distributors that the legal market could not possibly be absorbing so many of these weapons; suits filed by organizations on behalf of their members; and victims of violent crimes and their families who are injured or killed as a result of gun violence or defective guns that malfunction due to negligent design or manufacture.
___This issue is not an abstract one. When people vote for this gun liability absolution today, they are going to be hurting a lot of people all across this land, and I want to point out a few because this bill affects the lives of real gun victims, victims not simply of criminal misuse by a well-designed firearm, but victims of guns that have been designed poorly or marketed in ways which quite frankly should be illegal.
___One of the cases that could be affected by this_legislation, though this would ultimately be decided by a judge, is that of Brandon Maxfield, a 7-year-old from my State, Oakland, CA.
___On April 6, 1994, Brandon was shot in the chin by his babysitter. The shooting left him a quadriplegic and he will never be able to walk again.
___The babysitter, a friend of the family, was simply trying to remove a bullet from the chamber of a weapon that was found in the house, a .38 caliber Saturday night special, when the gun accidentally fired.
___Here is the key: The weapon was clearly designed in an inherently dangerous way. It can only be unloaded when the safety is in the off position and can therefore fire.
___Now common sense might say when you want to unload a gun you would first put the safety on. It defies common sense, on the other hand, to design a firearm so it can only be unloaded in the firing position. After all, one might expect the gun to accidentally fire as someone like Brandon's babysitter struggles to unload it.
___Finally last year, after 9 years of litigation, a jury found the manufacturer and distributor of Saturday night specials partially liable for Brandon's injuries. This was a tremendous victory for Brandon and his family and a victory for all people who want to see guns made safer. This bill, however, would take away Brandon's right to sue, and I will explain why a bit later.
___The bottom line, though, is Brandon's case was not frivolous. The jury did not think it was. Without the threat of lawsuits, companies like the one that made the gun in this case will have little incentive to change the design, but this legislation would remove the threat of that suit, depriving Brandon of compensation but, even worse, depriving the public of this key avenue to improving the habits of gun manufacturers.
___I will quickly go through what the bill does. I know others have and will continue to speak to this, but I think it bears repeating because I do not think everybody supporting this bill really understands its full ramifications.
___Essentially, this bill prohibits any civil liability lawsuit from being filed against the gun industry for damages resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a gun, with a number of narrow exceptions.
___In doing so, the bill effectively rewrites traditional principles of liability law, which generally hold that persons and companies may be liable for their negligence even if others are liable as well. This bill would essentially give the gun industry blanket immunity from civil liability cases, an immunity no other industry in America has today.
___The bill does allow certain cases to move forward, as its supporters have pointed out, but these cases can proceed only on very narrow circumstances. Countless experts have now said this bill would stop virtually all of the suits against gun dealers and manufacturers filed to date, many of which are vital to changing industry practice and compensating victims who have been horribly injured through the clear negligence or even borderline criminal conduct of some gun dealers and manufacturers.
___The exemptions in the bill, even the new bill, set a very high burden of proof of negligence for plaintiffs, allow for a very slight number of cases against gun manufacturers to be filed, and only protect a limited class of cases against sellers.
___Under this bill, cases could only be filed in the following narrow circumstances. First, if a gun dealer transfers a firearm knowing the gun will be used to commit a violent or drug trafficking crime. In other words, a suit could go forward if a dealer gives a gun to someone who comes in and says, ``Give me a gun, I need to go kill someone.'' This provision only applies in the highly unlikely event a gun buyer clearly indicates his or her criminal intentions to the gun seller. Fat chance of that happening.
___I am not a gun dealer, but I imagine most criminals do not make a habit of announcing their criminal intentions to gun dealers. So this exception to the immunity created by the bill is really no exception at all. It will apply to almost no cases.
___Secondly, there is an exemption in the bill which applies if a dealer sells a gun to someone knowing the buyer will or is likely to misuse the firearm and that the individual buyer does indeed misuse it to commit a criminal offense.
___This provision is slightly more likely than the first exemption, but it still requires a very high burden of proof. Instead of common negligence, which might only require that the dealer did not take enough care in making sure that criminals did not obtain guns to commit crimes, what this provision requires is that the dealer actually know that the buyer is likely to use the gun to do harm.
___How can this be proven? Mr. President, you are an attorney. How can this be proven? The difficulty in proving such a claim might all but bar this exemption from ever coming into play. It would have no effect on such practices as straw purchases and large volume sales--which, incidentally, are the two most common sources of crime guns--because in a straw purchase, the dealer could always claim that he or she had no idea what the buyer would be doing with the guns.
___Third, the bill would allow suits to proceed where a defendant has violated a law or regulation in the sale of the specific gun that caused the damage or injury. This sets a very high burden of proof for negligence. Again, this would not affect dealers who conduct straw purchases or other dangerous distributing conduct because such conduct does not specifically violate any laws or regulations, although I must say it should.
___Because there are so few real laws or regulations governing how guns are sold or manufactured, this provision, too, is relatively insignificant in terms of how it affects the underlying thrust of the bill.
___Now I should point out that this provision is different than the provision in the original bill as passed by the House. Under the original bill, only knowing and willful violations of the law could be subject to suit, which is an even higher burden to reach. But even under this revised legislation, this standard is far higher than current law.
___The simple truth is, negligence does not involve a violation of the law. Requiring a plaintiff to prove that a gun store, for example, was not only negligent in letting a criminal obtain a dozen guns, but the gun store actually violated a law in doing so, of which there are few, makes it very difficult to succeed.
___So with any other business or product, in every other industry, a seller or manufacturer can be liable if it is negligent--but not here. Since money, rather than life or liberty is at stake in a civil case, the standard of proof is lower. There need not be a criminal violation to recover damages, and in the overwhelming majority of civil cases there is no criminal violation. So if, for instance, a crib manufacturer designs and markets a crib that results in the death of children who use the crib, we allow that manufacturer to be sued as one means of deterring such conduct and of compensating the families of the children who died from the defectively designed crib. The manufacturer need
not have committed any crime. It is the negligence in making a defective and dangerous crib that is enough. Here, contrary to general negligence law covering almost every other product, this bill allows negligent gun dealers and manufacturers to get off the hook unless they violated a criminal law. That is just dreadful. You are creating a special area of law for gun manufacturers and saying unless they violate a law they can manufacture a defective weapon.
___The judge in Washington State presiding over the case brought against the DC area snipers has twice ruled that the dealer, Bull's Eye Shooters Supply, and the manufacturer, Bushmaster Firearms, may be liable in negligence for enabling the snipers to obtain their gun. But even with the new modifications, the sniper victims' case could very well be thrown out of court under this bill. So know what you are doing, Members who vote for it. The sniper victims' case could well be thrown out of court by this bill because there is no evidence that either the negligent dealer or manufacturer violated a criminal law.
___Indeed, both Lloyd Cutler and David Boies, each prominent attorneys, recently stated unequivocally that the sniper case would have to be dismissed under this bill, and countless professors have written a letter agreeing with this interpretation of the law.
___This is the most notorious sniper case in America. You have negligence on the part of the gun dealer who sold that gun, didn't report it until way late, allowed the snipers to get that gun, and now we are passing a law to prevent the victims from suing under civil liability. Nowhere else in the law does this exist.
___In another case, a Massachusetts court has ruled that gun manufacturer Kahr Arms may be liable for negligently hiring drug-addicted criminals and enabling them to stroll out the plant door with unmarked guns to be sold to criminals. But with the proposed changes, the case against Kahr Arms would be dismissed. Its conduct, though outrageous, violated no law. Negligent? Yes. Criminal? No.
___Members, know what you are doing when you vote for this bill.
___The fourth exemption in the bill is when a dealer somehow violates a sales contract. An example of this would be the dealer failing to provide the gun for which the purchaser paid. This, too, is clearly a limited exception. Victims of defectively designed or negligently sold guns would not be allowed to file cases under this provision. Furthermore, the claims of gun purchasers would be limited to what they were entitled to under the scope of the contract or warranty.
___The fifth exemption in the original bill allowed suits to go forward if the gun manufacturer has caused ``physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of a product when used as intended.'' This provision altered generally accepted principles of products liability law which essentially state that a manufacturer must implement feasible safety features that would prevent injury caused by foreseeable use or misuse, even if that use is not ``intended.'' For instance, it might not be intended for a child to try to eat a small toy, but it is clearly foreseeable.
___This new modified gun immunity legislation does add language allowing suits to go forward as long as the activity was ``reasonably foreseeable'' by the manufacturer or dealer, which appears to match current law. However, the devil is in the details because the bill then takes away any benefit that language might have by stating that the exemption will not apply to lawsuits that also involve criminal acts by the defendant.
___The best example of how this provision would affect the case is the Brandon Maxfield babysitter shooting I mentioned earlier, where a child was accidentally shot by a babysitter because the chamber of the gun could not be checked without clicking the safety to ``off.'' In that case, the gun fired while the babysitter tried to check the chamber.
___The problem is the bill prohibits suits involving even foreseeable accidents, if there are criminal charges. In the babysitter case, the babysitter could easily be, and indeed was, charged with manslaughter--which is a crime. Thus, even this suit would still be barred by this revised bill.
___Contrary to current law which allows judges and juries to apportion blame and damages, this bill would bar any damages against a manufacturer if another party was liable due to a criminal act.
___Why should firearms get special treatment? In our society, we hold manufacturers liable for the damage their products cause. This is the case with automobiles. This is the case with cribs. It is the case with children's toys, and it should be the case with guns as well. Lawsuits filed against the gun industry provide a way for those harmed to seek justice from the damages and destruction caused by firearms. Just as important, they create incentives to reform the practices proven to be dangerous.
___After all, this is the most dangerous consumer item found in a home.
___According to statistics, there is a gun in 43 percent of the households with children in America. There is a loaded gun in 1 of 10 households with children, and a gun that is left unlocked or improperly stored in 1 of every 8 family homes.
___More children and adult family members are killed each year by having a loaded gun at home than from incidents with criminal intruders. In fact, a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to lead to an accidental injury or death to family members than used against a criminal intruder. These are senseless actions that can be prevented by simply designing guns with technologically and economically feasible safety devices.
___Recent cases have produced evidence from law enforcement investigations, as well as industry insiders, that the gun industry may be ignoring numerous patented safety devices for guns and intentionally flooding certain markets with guns knowingly, and also profiting from the fact that the excess weapons would make their way into the hands of criminals. We have seen gun dealers selling guns when they know these guns are being purchased to immediately resell to criminals--often to criminals who wait right outside the door or even inside the very store while the guns are being bought by someone who can pass a background check.
